Thursday, December 29, 2011

Row over cancer risk of mobiles

AUSTRALIAN brain surgeon Charlie Teo is one of 16 world experts who have accused a global newspaper of publishing "technical errors and misleading statements" in an article that rubbished the idea mobile phones cause cancer.

In an open letter, the experts, who work in Europe, the US and Australia and have qualifications in fields such as cancer medicine, public health, statistics and electromagnetism, said the article published in The Economist "fails to provide critical information about this important public health challenge", and demanded that the journal print a correction.

The experts wrote that history was "replete with failures to control highly profitable carcinogenic substances, ranging from tobacco to asbestos, until proof of harm became irrefutable", and suggested on a conservative analysis that mobile phones and other wireless radiation might be seeding 250,000 avoidable brain tumours every year.

The document was released in riposte to an article published in the British-based Economist in September that ridiculed those who believe mobile phones are harming people as a "tinfoil-hat brigade" who continue to believe "deadly waves in the ether are frying their brains".

The Economist article implied that because radiowaves, microwaves and radiation from mobile phones and other devices was "non-ionising" radiation that lacked the energy to knock electrons out of atoms there was no plausible mechanism by which such radiation could trigger cancer.

The 16 co-authors replied that independent studies had shown mobile phone emissions could damage genetic material, increase the production of DNA-damaging free radicals, and affect the heart, brain, liver and hormone production.

In May, the World Health Organisation's International Agency for Research on Cancer upgraded its warning on mobile phone emissions to "possibly carcinogenic", which The Economist said put them in the same category as coffee and false teeth, but which the 16 experts say is also the same as for DDT, engine exhausts and fluorinated flame retardants.

“In both experiments, the
researchers found that when the right TPJ (right temporo-parietal junction) was
disrupted, subjects were more likely to judge failed attempts to harm as
morally permissible.”

The technique used
by the MIT scientists, transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS), has been
described as one that creates “virtual lesions”
on the brain.

Neurostar makes a device that affects mood and behavior, from outside the head. Photo: Neuronetics

And although TMS’s
long term effects on health are not well understood (similar amounts of
electromagnetic radiation have been linked to increased cancer risk), the
treatment is becoming increasingly popular for everything from tinnitus to
depression.

The US military
also hopes to use TMS to
keep soldiers fighting, without the need to stop for sleep.

I have been "researching" this subject on my own as an amateur researcher for approximately the past six years and I sometimes do have to question whether or not the so-called "experts" out there have really done their homework. Why do I say this? Because I seem to be seeing a more-or-less repetition of research conducted many years ago. For example, you talk above about the glucose experiments. Are you aware that L. I. Mischenko, in his paper, "Effect of the Ultra-high Frequency Electromagnetic Field on the Carbohydrate Metabolism of the Rat Brain," in the year 1969, showed an increase in both lactic acid and pyruvic acid with a decrease in glycogen in the brains of rats from exposures to nonthermogenic 48 MHz fields. With prolonged exposures, elevated brain levels of lactic acid remained high for a month. Relatively intelligent people with the ability to make logical inferences might be able to connect these facts (i.e. connect the dots) to the appearance of diseases like Fibromyalgia and Chronic Fatigue Syndrome, which mysteriously seem to have appeared and increased along with increases in ambient levels of EMFs that the majority of the population are all unwittingly being continuously exposed to 24/7. And despite work in the 1990s by Henry Lai and the REFLEX studies in 2004, I have also read about research (outlined in Paul Brodeur`s book "The Zapping of America) describing studies from the 1960s showing DNA damage. Of course, a good site is Dr. Magda Havas`s Zory`s archives, which in her own words is described as follows (readers will have to google this as links apparently do not appear on this page):

June 28, 2010. At the beginning of April 2010, a friend sent me a scanned document entitled “Bibliography of Reported Biological Phenomena (‘Effects’) and Clinical Manifestations attributed to Microwave and Radio-Frequency Radiation.”

This document first appeared on October 4, 1971, and what I received was the second printing with revisions, corrections, and additions, dated April 20, 1972. It was a Research Report (Project MF12.524.05-0004B, Report No. 2) commissioned by the Naval Medical Research Institute, and was authored by Zorach (“Zory”) R. Glaser, Ph.D., LT, MSC, USNR.

On page 4 of this 106-page document, the security classification reads “unclassified”, and the distribution statement reads “This document has been approved for public release and sale; its distribution is unlimited.”

To my surprise, I learned that by 1971 there were more than 2,300 references to documents that detailed the biological effects of radio frequency and microwave radiation from various technologies including radar and mobile communications, navigational devices, and physical therapy devices such as microwave and shortwave diathermy. What an amazing find, especially since the World Health Organization and the wireless telecommunication industries continually state that there is no credible research showing that non-ionizing, non-thermal microwave radiation is harmful at levels below our existing thermal guidelines.

As I flipped through the report and the citations, I found hundreds of references translated from Czech, Russian, German and Polish laboratories; references from the U.S. Navy, Army and Air Force; as well as government reports and documents, many of which had not been published or mentioned in other literature.

What a treasure chest of research on the bioeffects and health effects of microwave radiation!

I wondered if Dr. Glaser was still alive, and/or still active in the field of radio frequency (RF)/microwave bioeffects, as I had no idea how old he was back in 1972. Consequently I looked him up on the Internet, found a phone number, and called. I reached an answering machine with a young woman’s voice, and left a message saying I wanted to speak with Dr. Glaser and, if this was the correct phone number, could he please return my call. (It turned out that I had reached the phone of Dr. Glaser’s adult daughter.) I wanted to thank Dr. Glaser for the remarkable work he did pulling together so many references on this topic.

The following day (Saturday), Dr. Glaser called me, and we had a long, animated conversation about his research during the past few decades and my research interests, which were remarkably similar. He informed me that he had produced 9 supplements to the original 1971 bibliography, and now had cited well over 6,000 studies on the bioeffects and health effects of radio frequency and microwave radiation, and a number of these were studies showing that exposure to RF/microwave radiation was able, under certain conditions/circumstances, to produce changes, some of which could be considered dangerous (even at low levels where such exposure did not heat the body). He said he would send me copies or the references for the supplements he had in his possession.

For those of you who are new to the dangers of RF/microwave radiation, federal guidelines in Canada, the United States, the United Kingdom, Germany, Japan, New Zealand, and those recommended by the World Health Organization (WHO) are based on thermal effects. “If it does not heat you, it does not hurt you”, the saying goes. These countries/organizations deny that electromagnetic fields (EMFs) cause biological effects below the thermal threshold for microwave radiation.

Dr. Glaser is still considered to be one of the international experts in the RF/microwave bioeffects field, and I was most impressed with his knowledge, his insights, and his historical perspective.

Click HERE to visit his website to learn more about his credentials.

Just before we finished our long insightful telephone conversation into both of our careers, I asked him if, by chance, he had any paper copies of those references.

Dr. Glaser said, “funny you should ask. As a matter of fact I have them all. I kept the reports in my home (basement, attic and garage) for a number of years following my retirement from FDA, and then moved them into two large commercial storage spaces, and over the years offered them (consisting of about 45-50 large boxes) to scientists performing research in this field, and to governmental and university libraries, but no one seemed to want them. I was planning to discard them, as I am now looking toward real retirement, and storing them is quite costly.”

Dr. Glaser mentioned that a number of lawyers, and a few individuals working for the wireless industry have asked him for parts of his collection but he declined to give the collection to them because he felt the information would be buried. He indicated that he wanted the collection to be available to the public.

Before I knew what I was saying, I asked if I could have them. I would digitize them as PDF, put them online, and make them available to the public via the Internet. He thought for a long moment, and finally said “yes”, with the provision that I would pick them up or pay for their delivery. For a university research scientist like me, this was an opportunity equivalent to winning a lottery!

I learned that he lived in Maryland (between Baltimore and Washington, DC), and, as it happened, I was giving a lecture on the health effects of microwave radiation at the Johns Hopkins School of Public Health (his university, where he teaches, and where he earned the MPH degree in 1990) at the end of April, and we decided to meet. He came to my lectures, and actually became part of the lectures by joining me, at my invitation, in answering some questions raised by the audience, and sharing his expertise with the students, in the hope that the concerns for the possible dangers of RF/microwave radiation exposure would be considered by the public.

We then later visited the commercial storage unit, which was overflowing with many boxes containing thousands of reports and printed documents, and-after a quick peek at this treasure house of knowledge-we decided that once the documents was sorted to remove unrelated material I could pick them up. A few weeks later, I flew to Baltimore, rented a U-haul truck, and brought back the first of about 25 boxes overflowing with reports and printed documents.

The plan is to have the documents scanned (starting with ones that are more difficult to access, including government and military reports and translations of foreign technical articles) as searchable PDFs, and then make them available at the Electrosensitive Society website (www.rewire.me). This is obviously going to take some time.

In the meantime I have decided to sort through this collection, find the “gems”, provide abstracts (where appropriate) and post a summary in layman’s language on my website. The series will be posted under the heading “From Zory’s Archive”, and the articles will appear weekly as “Pick of the Week.

The very first article that I will summarize (and make available) is the document that first brought Dr. Glaser’s work to my attention, his bibliography dated 1971/1972.

For those who think there is no proof . . . stay tuned!"

At any rate, it would certainly be appreciated by many if the "experts" would do a thorough review of the research before making (in most cases, BAD) decisions that affect us all. For people who have been sick and are getting sick from this electromagnetic crap in our environment, what the experts are deciding is always too little too late.

Apple made record profits of £3.7 billion in the three months leading up to Christmas in 2010

It may have billion-pound profits and gushing praise for technological innovation but Apple is increasingly in the spotlight over its labour rights and environmental record. Eifion Rees reports on the 'sweatshop brand'

Thinner, lighter, faster... The iPad 2, recently launched in the UK, is the latest in a proliferating number of touch-screen devices from computer giant Apple.

It arrives on these shores a mere 12 months after the advent of the original iPad and the fourth-generation iPhone. Since 2007, when the first iPhone was launched, Apple’s smartphones and tablet computers have taken the world by storm.

But in recent years the company has faced criticism for its less than exemplary environmental and social record – including the use of toxic chemicals, a secretive supply chain and a lack of general commitment to green issues. Unlike other companies, it refuses to set future targets for reducing greenhouse gas emissions and does not produce corporate social responsibility (CSR) reports.

While Apple has belatedly answered many of these accusations, merely responding is the last thing many expected of this pioneer in its field. It may be breaking new ground with its technological innovations, but appears content to react rather than lead when it comes to the environmental and social impact of those products.

If it ain’t broke...

Globally there are in excess of 41 million iPhones, iPads and iPod Touches, sales of which have made Apple the world’s most valuable technology company. Four years ago the mobile operating system that supports its i-devices did not exist; now it accounts for 40 per cent of the company’s revenue. The company recorded profits of $6 billion for the fourth quarter of 2010 alone.

The boom is being fuelled by a constant stream of new or upgraded products – a source of some frustration to environmentalists and consumers alike.

'Apple has an incredibly fast refresh rate of new products, gadgets that are very resource-intensive to make and use,” says Tom Dowdall of Greenpeace International. 'The products people buy are out of date within 12 months. It’s the business model for the entire consumer electronics industry and it’s unsustainable. Apple’s biggest challenge is to address that consumption trend. There’s a limit to the sustainability claims any company can make when its business model is predicated on ever-increasing consumption.'

But with Apple shares trading at roughly £200, shareholders appear unlikely to support any change to business as usual. Quite the opposite: in February last year they voted to reject proposals to produce a detailed sustainability report and to create of a board committee focused on sustainability. Chinese workers poisoned

China is simultaneously a mass-market waiting to be tapped (25 new retail stores are planned there over the next two years) and the manufacturing locus for most of Apple’s products and components. A gulf lies between the bright lights of Beijing, where Apple opened its first Chinese store in 2008, and the factories where the iPads and iPhones are made. A situation that Apple’s lack of transparency about its supply chain has done little to dispel.

Several well documented incidents relating to its manufacturers have occurred over recent years. Scores of workers at a factory in Suzhou run by Taiwanese company Wintek were poisoned in 2010 after exposure to n-hexane, a toxic chemical used to clean components including Apple’s hallmark touch-screens. Two female factory workers northwest of Shanghai were hospitalised for six months in October 2010 after using n-hexane to glue and polish Apple logos on laptops and iPhones.

Last year a spokesperson claimed that Apple had been operating 'an extensive supplier auditing programme since 2006', but it guards its manufacturers’ identities so jealously this is impossible to verify, let alone establish whether green and good practice is filtering down the chain. Apple the 'sweatshop brand'

In January this year the Beijing-based non-profit Institute of Environmental and Public Affairs published a report into 29 global technology companies operating in China. The 36 non-governmental organisations that contributed to The Other Side of Apple placed Apple last in terms of 'responsiveness and transparency to health and environmental concerns'. After a nine-month study into seven of its suppliers, the report dubbed Apple: 'a sweatshop brand [that] based its mass production on its subcontractors, without proper protections in the workplace.'

Speaking at the time, IPE director Ma Jun said Apple had failed to respond to the report into malpractice in its supply chain. He accused the company of valuing the price and quality of its products over the environment and its social responsibilities, arguing that suppliers were being driven to cut corners in order to win contracts.

'Apple’s lack of responsiveness eventually made us quite shocked. It's the whole complacency that it doesn’t have to be accountable to the NGOs, to the communities, even to the poisoned workers.'

The company did finally respond last month with the publication of Apple Supplier Responsibility: 2011 Progress Report, in which it finally acknowledged that 137 workers suffered n-hexane poisoning. The report also found 91 children working in 10 facilities run by its suppliers, compared to 11 at three facilities last year.

Tom Dowdall acknowledges that Apple has made great progress but still has a way to go; he says it is 'living up to its promise of leadership' on the phasing-out of toxic materials, for instance. Further information can be found on the environment section of the Apple website.

And yet it’s difficult to escape the feeling that such leadership has had to be encouraged: chief executive Steve Jobs revealed in 2007 that Apple did have an environmental agenda, but his open letter came a year after Greenpeace had launched Green My Apple. (Far from being stung into action, he explained that 'it is generally not Apple’s policy to trumpet our plans for the future; we tend to talk about the things we have just accomplished'.)Steve Jobs to blame?

One of the lowest-scoring companies in the inaugural Guide to Greener Electronics in 2006, Greenpeace’s hope had been that an Apple-specific campaign would turn a brand leader into an industry leader on the environment.

When the 16th Guide was published in October 2010, however, Apple had slipped from fifth place to nine, scoring poorly on its recycled plastic content, use of renewable energy and support for a global reduction in greenhouse gases. Some immediate major improvements that Apple could make would be to roll out global recycling coverage, recover and reuse materials from old products, and ensure services hosted on cloud-computing platforms are run on renewable energy, says Dowdall.

Gideon Middleton, a senior lecturer in business and climate change at the University of East Anglia, says Apple’s failure to shoulder its environmental and social responsibilities is down to one man: Steve Jobs.

'Even a company like Wal-Mart is quite forcefully pushing climate change and social responsibility down its supply chain in the Far East – I find it incongruous that Apple isn’t doing the same. To explain that disconnect in what in so many other ways seems to be a responsible brand you would have to look at the belief systems of a company’s senior managers. One would suspect that the ultimate person preventing these things happening is Steve Jobs himself.

It will be interesting to see who replaces Jobs as chief executive if he steps down due to poor health, Middleton adds. 'If they don’t put in someone with a more responsible, ethical and sustainable viewpoint, they will succumb to short-term financial pressures to keep producing more and more new products.'

Apple was approached for a comment but declined to respond to specific questions.

I did see the article and thought that it was in part a response to my questions. I hence posted it to my list and soon received an email from Dr. Dimitris Panagopoulus questioning why his own research was also in fact seemingly ignored -- or to perhaps rephrase it semantically as "not taken into account."

He attached several of his papers to the email that I have since uploaded to Scribd:

In my opinion, arrogantly ignoring/disregarding/overlooking any evidence while at the same time using Scientific Rhetoric as a smokescreen to obfuscate the issue is not only the worst and most dangerous form of ignorance, but it is also verging on a form of psychopathology. Perhaps, we can call it trickle-down psychopathology in this case, as it seems to have infected large portions of the population -- who seem to possess, in other words, what Marcuse called the "Happy Consciousness." "I do not care what injustices are occurring in the world as long as my false electromagnetic needs are being satisfied."

Anyway perhaps you can answer Dr. Dimitris Panagopoulus`s question. Many people who are on top of this issue know that Dr. Panagoplous, as well as Dr. Olle Johansson, and many others have been academically persecuted for doing research, and hence speaking out on it, which show biological effects from exposure to electromagnetic radiation.

Sunday, December 25, 2011

MRC funds £1.6m research into CFS/ME

21 December 2012

The Medical Research Council (MRC) has awarded more than £1.6m for research into the causes of the debilitating condition chronic fatigue syndrome/myalgic encephalomyelitis (CFS/ME).

The investment will fund five new projects to investigate the mechanisms and underlying biological processes involved in the illness, which could eventually lead to better diagnosis and the development of more effective treatments.

CFS/ME is a complex and debilitating condition that affects around 250,000 people in the UK, including children. Symptoms include profound physical and mental fatigue, muscle and joint pain, disturbed sleep patterns and concentration and memory problems. The combination and severity of symptoms varies from patient to patient, making it a difficult condition to diagnose and treat.

Professor Stephen Holgate, Chair of the MRC’s Population and Systems Medicine Board, said:

“There is a pressing need to understand the causes of CFS/ME, and the MRC is delighted to announce substantial funding to address this. The quality and breadth of the scientific proposals we received in response to our funding call exceeded expectations and led to us funding more studies than we had originally anticipated.

“We’re especially pleased that the five new projects address many of the priority areas identified by our CFS/ME Expert Group in collaboration with charities and leading researchers in the field. We hope the awards will drive forward the research agenda in this area, paving the way for new diagnostic tools and treatments.”

Dr Charles Shepherd, member of the MRC CFS/ME Expert Group and trustee of the ME Association, which has agreed to provide £30,000 to co-fund one of the five projects, said:

“The ME Association is very pleased to learn that the MRC has followed up the research priorities identified by the Expert Group and agreed to fund five high-quality studies that aim to identify important biomedical abnormalities that may be involved in the underlying cause of CFS/ME.

“The patient community will particularly welcome research involving biomarkers/biological fingerprints, which could lead to a diagnostic test, and immune system abnormalities, which could lead to more effective forms of treatment.

“The fact that one of the studies is being co-funded by the charity sector marks a much needed step forward in co-operation between patients and researchers in this field. This initiative could be utilised to help fund additional research involving the priorities not yet covered by this announcement.”

The MRC has striven to stimulate high quality CFS/ME research for a number of years. Most recently the specially constituted MRC CFS/ME Expert Group, which involves leading researchers in the field and related areas, along with representatives from two CFS/ME charities, identified six priority areas where important research questions remained unanswered.

In February 2011, the MRC issued a £1.5m call for proposals in these areas, aimed at encouraging fresh partnerships between established CFS/ME researchers and those with strong scientific credentials, but new to this field. The key areas were:

Nervous system disorders

Cognitive symptoms

Fatigue

Immune dysregulation (eg. through viral infection)

Pain

Sleep disorders

In response to the high quality of the applications received, the MRC decided to provide an extra £150,000 to support the package of successful projects. The awards range in total value from £120,000 to £450,000 and the successful applicants were:

Dr Wan Ng, Newcastle University

Professor Julia Newton, Newcastle University

Professor Anne McArdle, University of Liverpool

Professor David Nutt, Imperial College London

Dr Carmine Pariante, King’s College London

While the applications addressed most of the priority areas highlighted in the call, the MRC will announce shortly how it plans to stimulate research activity in those areas which were not covered.

December 24, 2011, Berkeley, CA, USA & Stockholm,
Sweden. An important new analysis, The Potential Impact of Mobile
Phone Use on Trends in Brain and CNS Tumors, was published today in the
journal Neurology & Neurophysiology. It can be downloaded without
cost at http://www.omicsonline.org/2155-9562/2155-9562-S5-003.pdf.
The paper is in a Special Issue of the journal titled “Brain Tumor.”

The study
raises very serious concerns about the potential for a large increase in brain
cancer incidence, resulting from widespread mobile phone use. The steep
increase in brain cancer will begin in approximately 15 years according to the
projections.

The paper, by researchers Örjan Hallberg in Sweden and L. Lloyd
Morgan in the U.S., first reviews biological effects from mobile phone use
reported in peer-reviewed studies, such as increased permeability of the
blood-brain barrier, deleterious effects on sperm, double strand breaks in DNA,
stress gene activation (indicating an exposure to a toxin), and increased risk
of an acoustic nerve tumor (acoustic neuroma) and brain cancer after 10 or more
years of mobile phone use. It then considered two established mechanisms for
the development of brain cancer—that mobile phone use decreases the efficiency
of the repair of mutated DNA and that mobile phone use increases the rate of
DNA mutations.

In developing the model from brain cancer registry data,
mathematical model parameters are selected which provide a best fit to the age
adjusted registry data. The model can be considered reasonably accurate
if it approximates both the age-specific brain cancer incidence (e.g., 30-34
year age cohort) and the age-adjusted brain cancer incidence from the cancer
registry data. It can then be used by the researchers to predict future brain
cancer incidence.

Based on a 30-year time between first mobile phone use and
diagnoses of brain cancer (latency time), the model predicts that there will be
a 100% increased incidence of brain cancer (2-fold) if DNA repair efficiency is
decreased by mobile phone use, and a 2,400% increase in brain tumors (25-fold)
if mobile phone use mutates DNA. The figure below, from the paper
illustrates these predictions.

Figure
3. Norwegian brain tumor age-adjusted rates per 100,000 person-years by
calendar year for reported data with 3 results from mobile phone use 1)
Increased DNA damage 2) no DNA repair and 3) has no effect.

The public health risk modeling process used in this analysis
was developed by Örjan Hallberg and has been successfully applied in other
illnesses, including Alzheimer’s disease and melanoma.

Hallberg says, “Such
modeling, or risk projection, is important, whether for the climate or for
diseases, in that it allows public health contingency planning, should the
model be reasonable accurate. For example, will there be sufficient
neurosurgeons should brain tumors increase as the model predicts?

” Morgan
says, “What this analysis shows is that, unless mobile phone usage behavior
patterns change significantly, we can reasonably expect a pandemic of brain
tumors, for which we are ill-prepared, beginning approximately 15 years from
now. Governments, as well as parents, physicians, schools and all citizens,
would be well advised to educate all persons under their care or influence
about the need to curtail the use of mobile phones and other radiation-emitting
consumer devices.

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About Me

While I have always been extremely health conscious and am presently in excellent health, I did become temporarily out-of-commission (i.e. I was really sick) in 2005 with a number of at the time unexplainable symptoms. I was quite puzzled at the time because I had been eating mainly organically grown food, drinking spring water, doing Yoga every morning, and going to the gym several times a week. In other words, I was doing everything one is supposed to do to stay healthy. I was not supposed to get sick. It took me six months before discovering or even imagining the main source of the problem - which was in fact "overexposure to electromagnetic" - especially microwave - radiation. I was living within 200 meters of two cell phone towers at the time and within 500 meters of a 3rd one with numerous WiFi signals bleeding into my apartment from adjacent neighbors. I developed a host of symptoms, which are found in what has been misleadingly described as Chronic Fatigue Syndrome (CFS) -- but much more accurately described as Radio Wave or Microwave Sickness. Large numbers of people in the USA suddenly started getting sick in 1984...